Promoting inclusion through Social Innovation Education

<< Background >>The SIE4P.Inc project was born out of an observation: students with additional educational needs (AEN), who are enrolled in adapted or specialized environments, have fewer opportunities than others to exercise their citizenship and benefit from education for sustainable development in particular. However, they will become citizens like their peers, and will face the same challenges (environmental, social, economic). Therefore, partners wanted to address their lack of access to educational activities to help them learn about citizenship. This undertaking required to take into account the difficulties encountered by teachers, who were and still are reporting a lack of resources, training and time to implement such learnings. Among existing pedagogical proposals, the Education for Social Innovation (SIE) model developed and tested as part of the NEMESIS program (H2020) had proved its worth in developing transferable skills in a mainstream educational environment, but had not been tested with AEN students. << Objectives >>Partners wanted to contribute to the civic education of AEN students by capitalizing on the NEMESIS experience to design social innovation education (SIE) resources adapted different needs, and thus make their contribution to more inclusive societies. To this end, Partners set themselves 4 specific objectives: 1/ To develop and test a theoretical and practical framework for inclusive SIE, enabling teachers to adopt a new educational approach with students with additional educational needs. 2/ Train teachers to implement SIE in their professional context with AEN students3/ Create turnkey pedagogical and training resources for teachers so that they feel comfortable implementing inclusive SIE.4/ Provide an opportunity for young people to participate as volunteers and learn about social innovation through real-life experience and by working with AENstudents.<< Implementation >>The 10 partners of the SIE4P.Inc project cocreated the methodology of inclusive SIE by surveying special education teachers needs and by drawing inspiration from relevant pedagogical approaches and existing best practices. By summer 2023, the result was a reference document, the Social Innovation Education for Inclusion Framework, accompanied by a set of teaching resources directly applicable in the classroom: a manual for teachers, another for young volunteers, and a bank of 40 activities enabling students to carry out social innovation actions in their environment and develop their soft skills. A training module was developed and implemented in autumn 2023 to help teachers familiarize themselves with these resources before implementing them in classrooms during a pilot phase in the first half of 2024. The pilot phase enabled 51 teachers and 176 students to test the resources and carry out concrete projects on local sustainability issues. At the end of the pilot phase, the resources were reviewed and revised to take account of feedback from the field. The final version was widely distributed in autumn 2024. << Results >>SIE4P.Inc has enabled the publication of a set of turnkey, classroom-tested teaching resources for deploying social innovation education with students with additional educational needs. It includes a theoretical framework, a teacher's manual, a volunteer's manual and a bank of activities, all available free of charge on a dedicated website and all co-constructed with the support of 51 teachers involved, who were trained before testing them in classrooms. The project has also enabled 176 students with additional educational needs from 5 countries, benefiting from inclusive social innovation education, to contribute to solving local problems: waste management, health issues, poverty... sustainability issues that they have identified and wished to resolve. In so doing, they were able to develop their ability to collaborate, solve problems, communicate and solve problems. The dissemination of the project's results enabled hundreds of educational actors to discover Social innovation education for inclusion, its principles, purpose and tools, and how it contributes to inclusion and sustainable development.